Water Main Rupture Floods Streets and Disrupts Hospitals

By MICHAEL COOPER

Published: July 16, 1998

A loose cap blew off a water main on Manhattan's Upper East Side yesterday, opening up a gaping sinkhole, sending water surging through the streets, shutting the nearby Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive for several hours and disrupting operations at some of the city's most prestigious hospitals.

The havoc began shortly after 4 A.M. when a geyser of muddy water started spraying into the street at 68th Street and York Avenue, at the crossroads of some of the area's most important medical institutions and research centers. No one was seriously injured, but the cascading water flooded the streets for blocks around, and quickly started pouring into hospital basements, hampering operations.

At Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, on the west side of York Avenue, nonemergency surgery was postponed, many chemotherapy appointments were rescheduled, and employees struggled to keep convalescing patients comfortable after nearly half of the hospital's air-conditioning system was knocked out on the hot and humid day. At New York and Presbyterian Hospital, on the east side of the avenue, the main entrance was closed, pickups and drop-offs were disrupted, and scientists struggled frantically to salvage the fruits of years of research as water flooded into their basement laboratories.

At ground zero for the flood was a dark blue Lincoln Town Car driven by Imran Siddiqui, a livery driver. Mr. Siddiqui, who had just dropped off a fare and was tallying up his receipts, said he felt a brief trembling and then a violent lurch as the rear of the car sank into the street. Water shot up around the windows, he said, as if he had been in a drive-through car wash. He escaped just before the earth opened and swallowed his car.

''At first I thought the East River had overflowed, or there had been an earthquake,'' Mr. Siddiqui, 24, said from a gurney at the New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, where he went for X-rays yesterday afternoon.

Unlike hundreds of other water main ruptures that plague the city's aging infrastructure each year, yesterday's mishap was not caused by a defect in century-old piping, but rather by a small section of pipe that was laid in 1992.

The rupture occurred at an elbow of the East Side's water system, where a 36-inch distribution pipe that runs down York Avenue turns east onto 68th Street. At the bend is a 20-inch-wide stub of a pipe, which is supposed to be shut by a metal cap until it is ultimately linked to a new branch of pipe continuing south on York Avenue. The cap, which had been held in place by clamps, blew off.

''It was like taking the cork out of a Champagne bottle,'' said Joel A. Miele, Commissioner of the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the city's 6,600 miles of water pipes. Mr. Miele said that the cap was held in place by a single set of clamps, but that new specifications put in place after 1992 called for fastening pipe caps down with two sets of clamps. He said an inquiry into the mishap would focus on why the clamps gave way.

The flooding led to a series of frenzied early morning calls summoning doctors and scientists to their labs, both to assuage the concerns of rescue workers that hazardous materials could be washed into public areas and to save data from long-term research projects.

Dr. Hugh Robertson, who directs a molecular biology lab at the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University, got a call shortly after 4:30 A.M. and raced to his lab, which is in a basement with windows at street level.

''We're a research lab, so we expect all manner of things -- unexpected things -- that nature will visit upon us,'' Dr. Robertson said, ''but usually we expect it in an experimental context. We watched the water fill the window wells and then pour through the seals at a great clip. Suddenly, in a moment, years of data was jeopardized.''

Dr. Robertson and his students spent the morning trying to salvage what they could, photocopying soggy reports before they became illegible, trying to preserve films of molecules and seeing whether all the computers still worked.

Olivia Neel, 31, a senior graduate student, sat outside New York and Presbyterian Hospital in her white lab coat, drinking coffee and worrying about two years of research she had done on the delta virus, which can cause significant liver damage in humans when it strikes in conjunction with hepatitis B.

''There's a tremendous amount of damage,'' she said. ''It's like a plague of Egypt.''

Hundreds of city workers spent yesterday gathered around the yawning sinkhole, which stretched 30 feet long by 20 feet wide and reached 8 feet deep. By midday, Mr. Siddiqui's totaled Lincoln had been fished out.

The flooding closed the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive in both directions between 61st Street and 71st Street for several hours during yesterday's morning rush and shut down traffic on York Avenue between 63d Street and 71st Street for most of the day.

Consolidated Edison shut off its steam lines to keep them from being ruptured by the sudden blast of cold water pouring over them. The lack of steam power knocked out half of Memorial Sloan-Kettering's air-conditioning system, which uses steam power to turn turbines. Officials at the hospital turned off the air-conditioning in office areas to divert as much cold air as possible to patients. Steam power was fully restored by 10 o'clock last night, hospital officials said.

Bits of asbestos that insulate the steam pipes were loosened by the flood, leading emergency workers to seal off the area and forcing each worker to get decontaminated by white-suited firefighters wielding brushes and by rinsing off in a four-by-six-foot wading pool marked ''Hazmat Decon Pool.''

Jerome M. Hauer, the director of the Mayor's Office of Emergency Management, said the decontamination was merely a precaution. ''The asbestos was not airborne,'' he said.

Although the flood did not do nearly as much damage as other water main breaks -- like the Jan. 2 rupture that flooded lower Fifth Avenue and ignited a nearby gas main -- it left a series of indelible images in the memory of witnesses. It began with a trickle but grew into a surging rivulet.

''I thought somebody was cleaning the sidewalks,'' said Manny Kouroupakis, 45, who was setting up his coffee truck on York Avenue when the break occurred. ''Then the water kept coming and coming.''

Mr. Kouroupakis and Mr. Siddiqui, the livery driver, called the police. ''The limo was bouncing up and down, with water shooting up about three or four feet into the air,'' Mr. Kouroupakis said.

Then the car fell into the hole.

Mr. Siddiqui, who plans to enroll at York College this year, said his father had always worried about his work as a livery driver, especially about the thieves. ''When I get home, my dad will probably say, 'I'm sorry, but I told you a thousand times: It's not safe,' '' he said, laughing.

Photo: Southbound traffic was diverted yesterday from Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive onto 71st Street after a water main break at 68th Street and York Avenue flooded the area. (Associated Press)(pg. B1) Map showing site of water main break: The area affected by a water main break early yesterday morning. (pg. B8)